15 JEAN-PHILIPPE COLLARD After the publication of the first six volumes of transcriptions in 1916, the ‘BachBusoni Gesammelte Ausgabe’ was compiled in Leipzig in 1920 as a set of seven volumes sorted into different categories. The first two are Bearbeitungen (arrangements), the third Übertragungen (transcriptions), while the fourth is made up of Kompositionen und Nachdichtungen (compositions and reinterpretations). Das wohltemperierte Klavier, annotated and expanded with technical considerations on the modern piano, is the subject of the fifth and sixth volumes. The seventh (Nachträge) contains supplements to books I to IV. All the works selected here belong to volume III. These transcriptions span the years 1888 to 1900 and focus on some of Bach’s most celebrated works for organ. Several are clearly devoted to worship through the chorale — the congregational hymn of the Reformed tradition — while preludes, toccatas, and fugues are more evocative of the concert environment. Yet nothing can ever be so precisely categorised in the work of a musician so consistently devoted to the spiritual realm. The great Prelude and Fugue in E-flat major, BWV552, bears witness to this. Its two parts frame the 1739 edition that forms the third part of the Clavierübung, which includes 21 chorale preludes or paraphrases and 4 duets, bringing the total number of pieces in the collection to 27 — that is, 3³. A symbolic number that can be linked to the three flats in the key signature, the three thematic motifs of the prelude, and the three subjects of the fugue, all of which reflect the Trinitarian reference that runs throughout this liturgical volume.
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